Visualization Tips

If you are having trouble with visualizations don't worry you're not the only one!
Visualization is the process of making mental pictures and is a powerful technique used to help you focus your attention what you desire. People often come to me expressing concern that they are doing something wrong because they are having trouble seeing what they want.

Not everyone has a widescreen movie theater on the inside of their eyelids. Some people close their eyes and see absolutely nothing! Just blackness or spots, but not a picture.
Whether you know it or not you can visualize. To practice, try visualizing something you already have. It can be anything you want but to start off try something you see or do everyday. If it's something you are already familiar with the easier this will be.

For example: Think of your favourite chair...

What does it look like?
What colour is it?
Is it upholstered in leather or suede or some other fabric?
Has it got a hole in the armrest or is it in perfect condition?
Is it a lovely soft and snuggly kind of chair?
Is it an antique?
Imagine yourself sitting in your chair.
How good do you feel at the end of a hard day when you get to put your feet up and relax in that chair?
Feel the tension ease away as you blob out in your favourite chair.
How do you feel after you have been relaxing there?

Once you master visualizing simple everyday things you can let your imagination run wild! When you visualize try and be as specific as possible but most importantly remember to attach emotion to it.
A great way to think of it is more as feel-ization rather than visualization. It's the emotion attached to what we are focusing on that gives power to our thoughts.

If you think back to when you were a child, the things you are most likely to remember are the experiences that have a strong feeling or emotional attachment. Like the excitement of Christmas morning or the dreaded visit to the dentist!
When you remember an experience that has a strong emotional attachment it's almost as if you are there. This is what you need to feel when visualising. Focus on the outcome you desire not on how you are going to achieve it. Feel as if you already have what you want!

Children are great at visualizing. They get right into the experience. When a child is running around playing Spiderman, He IS Spiderman! When he sings into a hairbrush or plays air guitar, He IS A Rock Star! Children naturally get the essence of Make Believe, it Makes you Believe!

Story Time...
Write a story about what you want or how you you'd like your life to be. Make sure you write it in the present tense.
Write down everything as if you already have it. Go into as much detail as possible and remember to use emotion. Write what you love about your new life as if you are already living it!
Read your story to yourself everyday and feel the excitement and joy in it.
Better still record yourself reading your story and listen to it in the car or on the way to and from work or whenever you feel like it.

Vision Boards...
Another great way to visualize is to create a vision board. Cut out pictures from magazines, newspapers etc or use photos or even drawings of things you really want. Put as many pictures as you like, there are no limits. Just make sure they are things you truly desire. Remember it's the emotion you attach to your visualizations that will bring results.
Paste them onto a large piece of card and hang it on your wall. Make sure you put your vision board someplace you will see it often, every time you see your vision board focus on one of your pictures.

It might be a new car, just imagine how you feel having that car for real! Feel what it's like sitting in that new car. Focus on as many details as you can, e.g. make and model, colour, interior, exterior everything you can think of. Imagine how you feel when you are driving it!
Whatever method you use, the main thing to remember is to use emotion. Make your visualization a fun experience. You want to feel joy and excitement when doing visualizations. The higher your energy levels the better the results. Do whatever it takes to get excited!

If you want a new car...
When you are driving around in your old car "make believe" that it's your new car.
Go to the car dealers and take your dream car for a test drive.
Get a friend to take a photo of you in or next to your dream car.
Hire your dream car for a day.

If you want a new house...
Go and look at houses.
Go to open homes and imagine yourself living there.
Look around for ideas and features that you would like in your own home.
Drive around and see what different areas are like, where do you want your new home to be?

If you want a dream vacation...
Get brochures from travel agents.
Look in travel magazines or on the internet for your ideal retreat.
Write up you own itinerary of all the destinations you would like to see.
If you want to go to Paris put a picture of the Eiffel Tower on your vision board.
Visualizing is just like picking your favourite things out of a catalogue. Once you get started you won't want to stop. Soon you'll find yourself visualizing without prompting, it will become a habit. Habits are formed through repetition. If you practice visualizing everyday the better your results will be.
I hope this helps you to get inspired and start visualizing today!

By Alison Bolger

To Make A Lot Of Money Fast, You Gotta Have A Plan

First, let me say, there is nothing wrong with wanting to make rapid returns on your investments or efforts. That is the point of money. Money buys you time. If you have the desire and need to make a lot of money fast, then I congratulate you because you have recognized that time is worth more than money.

Working in a job 8 hours a day for a few bucks an hour, you can be forgiven as you approach a more mature age, that this style of making money has serious limitations. Particularly, you may notice, that as you get older, time is more valuable and the precious moments you spend swapping them for a few bucks an hour, that it is quite likely that it is the wrong thing to do. You only get one life, and fundamentally, it is there for living.

Of course, to make a lot of money fast, it often is stigmatized as "good and honest people" can see an ethical issue with wanting to make large sums of money fast and they have a point. But it depends on the plan. A good business plan that will facilitate a rapid and large amount of money coming to you is a good plan. Nobody can deny that. The actual point of business plans is to be able to assess an ideas capacity for a return and to consider even if the business idea is even viable.

Making a large amount of money fast is not difficult if you put your mind to it. It all comes down to the planning stage. Finding demand is the first step. There is no point developing a product or service for something people don't want AND are not willing to pay for. The next consideration is your distribution channel. In other words, how will you reach that demand and tell them you have what they are looking for and need.
Finally theres the marketing considerations including pricing and graphical assets that assist in the sales process. These three considerations, A) demand B) distribution channel C) and Marketing are the starting point. Start brain storming and come up with a few ideas and research and flesh out those three key areas. You can make it happen if you are careful in the embryonic planning stage and research your assumptions carefully in all three main areas.

By Martin Thomas

Can A Good Engineer Become A Successful Entrepreneur?

When I joined a big corporation after coming to this country about 25 years ago, I was surprised to hear the following opinion from my manager, a very good administrator with an MBA degree from MIT: "A highly qualified professional is like an important piece of equipment. When you need it, you buy it. When you do not, you get rid of it."

Several years ago, I attended a meeting where a high-ranking executive of a large company spoke about leadership in front of an audience of engineers and scientists. The speaker, whose background was in both business administration and engineering, argued that an engineer or a scientist simply cannot be a high-level leader in an engineering company and should not be even trained to become one.
Furthermore, in-depth technical knowledge should be viewed as a burden, an obstacle that prevents an engineering professional from becoming a successful leader by developing a broad understanding and a clear vision of various administrative, financial, and psychological issues.

Such a viewpoint is widely held, especially in large corporations. But is it right? Is it not because of such a perception that the communication giant AT&T was brought by its leaders from its top position in the world just 20 years ago to its diminished fortunes today? Has the time of Edisons, Fords, Bells, and Marconis gone forever? Could an engineer or an applied scientist make a successful entrepreneur? What skills would one need?

We live in a world that needs creative leadership, and the necessity for effective scientific and technological entrepreneurship is increasing. Rapid technological change and the emerging global marketplace provide challenges for engineers and businessmen. Understanding how to recognize and evaluate market opportunities has become crucial in the new environment.
A technological professional with entrepreneurial skills has a better chance than a business administrator of moving innovations from research into manufacturing and the marketplace.

The professional qualifications of an engineer are not an obstacle, but an important prerequisite for making a business successful. But, of course, it is the engineer's entrepreneurial abilities and business-oriented actions that will make the business successful. These same abilities and actions will make the engineer a valued enabler of society's wealth creation, and not a commodity in the global marketplace.

An engineering entrepreneur should be able to deal with uncertainty and ambiguity; be flexible; "mind someone else's business" in addition to his own; understand and be able to speak the language of other professionals and other entrepreneurs, not necessarily just that of his or her own engineering or business domain; possess effective lateral (functional) thinking and vertical (in-depth) thinking, as well as a team player's attitude; be able to be both a convincing "speaker" and an attentive "listener"; be able to understand, explain, and persuade, and possess courage to take on reasonable risks and responsibilities as a leader.

In addition, an engineering entrepreneur should be a good psychologist and a people-oriented person; have a creative and an inquisitive mind; be internationally conscious; be knowledgeable in foreign languages and cultures; be able to think on the international level and in international terms; exhibit interest in, and possess good knowledge of, foreign values, attitudes, and customs. Communication skills, both oral and written, are important, and computer skills are vital. Such skills have become ingrained into the modern culture, and are no longer only an element of education.

Since most American companies conduct a large share of their manufacturing and sales operations overseas, an engineering entrepreneur should understand the economics and financial aspects of an engineering effort (for example, how to make a product offshore, decide on best buy-vs.-develop strategies, and so on); be goal-oriented, aggressive, highly motivated, and be a creative performer; possess strong analytical and planning skills, as well as negotiating skills.
A thorough understanding of the state-of-the-art in many related areas of engineering is critical, as is a vision for the most promising directions in the development of applied science and engineering.
An engineering entrepreneur should be able to work well in dynamic and rapidly changing environments, under pressure and in short time frames; possess an ability to work effectively across multiple organizations, boards, companies, and departments, and with specialists of different disciplines and fields, and with people of different mentalities, origins, and cultural backgrounds; be willing to learn new things and be receptive to, and have a quick grasp of, new approaches and ideas.
An engineer can and should possess business skills and become a good entrepreneur-that is, guide the business side, as well as the technological side, of a successful enterprise.

By Praise Paul

Make Your Money Work For You

Do you want to know the real truth about how to get wealthy? The answer is very simple. All you need to do is make your money work for you, instead of you having to work for your money.
Talk to all the people who have become wealthy and I bet they’ll all tell you that they make their money work for them.
They may not have started out with any money but they learned that if they were smart with what money they did earn they could make it work for them instead of the other way around. This rule does not discriminate. Every one has an equal chance to do this and it is never too late to start.

Why hasn’t someone explained this to you before you ask? Why didn’t you learn this at school? You are probably like the majority of people who went to school. You went to learn how to get a job and work for money for the rest of your life. Wouldn’t you rather have been taught how to make your money work for you? Did any of your teachers show you how to do this. Not likely. They probably didn’t know how to do it either.

You were probably told from a very early age to get a good education so that you could get a good job. This good job would assure you of a steady income for the rest of your life. If you were lucky, and got a really good job where you earned lots of money, then you might be able to save up enough money for the deposit on a house. Then you could spend the rest of your life paying off your mortgage and hopefully have a few dollars left to save for your retirement.
Did anyone tell you that by the time you get around to retiring, your savings probably wont go very far.
Forget about a pension because there probably won’t be one by the time you retire. Well, if that’s the case then once you retire it won’t be too hard to have to start scrimping and economizing as you’ve done that all your life anyway so you are well qualified. Your only worry now is that you hope that your money won’t run out before you do.

Well before it’s too late, just how do you go about making your money work for you? Well there are dozens of ways you can do this. The first thing you need to do is find out from the experts how they do it. You need to be prepared to start educating yourself on the different options that are available out there.

By Alison Bolger